Team drawings for test fixtures

Technical Technical Discussion
#1

Our team is in its second season and we are pretty space constrained – effectively working out of someone’s garage still.
Last season we built the test props and drove them to a local church that was kind enough to lend us their gym to do testing.
When we looked at the ones offered this season, the switch and scale are whole replicas of the real ones. It would be difficult to even store them let alone take them to the test field.
Was looking for thoughts about testing this game, whether teams plan on building the full switch and scale or possibly reduced models of them (like a half switch?), or maybe none at all and test the robot deliver the cubes to a flat surface of suitable height.

thanks
adrian cepleanu
mentor to Jagbots team #6518

#2

Because we’re helping host a week 0 event, we’re building a switch for sure and possibly a scale. If we don’t end up building the scale, I think we will definitely just build a platform. We’re in a bit of the same bind- we don’t have shop space to practice, so we have to go up two floors to get open carpet space.

Personally I don’t see a reason that a 7 ft platform is reasonably different from the scale enough that it wouldn’t get you 90% of the field experience you would get from building the entire thing.

#3

Our team is choosing to build the team version scale in full and the associated platform. For the switch we are not building a full operational model. We are just putting together one half of the frame for our practice field (the switch is pretty straight forward).

For anyone that is interested, last night I did the math on the required wood for a full operational scale and its platform using the FIRST Team plans. We are getting the following materials to build it:

Three 1/2in 4ftx8ft OSB Sheet
Three 3/4in 4ftx8ft OSB Sheet
Four 12ft 2x4s
Sixteen 8ft 2x4s

#4

I want to point out this thread with Jason Brett’s super useful cut sheets.

Also note, the team version of the platform is about 8 inches narrower in width left to right than the actual platform. To me, that’s a big deal. I think we’re going to rework ours to be the right size. To build everything is like $600 in lumber isn’t it… :frowning:

#5